


Rustle of the Leaves

by Omorka



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:18:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Time War may be over, but the Trees fight wars of their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rustle of the Leaves

**Author's Note:**

> A random bit of fic set in the Whoniverse but not involving any canon characters. No spoilers.

The jungle swayed uncomfortably above, tugged by forces deeper than wind and water. Cadda placed her free hand, the one unencumbered by the cryo-pistol, against the bark of a rooted tree with loose limbs and huge, fan-shaped leaves. _It will be all right,_ she sent to it. _This thing is not your master; it will have no hold over you if we can help it._ She waited for some sense of comprehension from it; instead, she felt confusion, and perhaps sorrow.

"Oh, for the Forest's sake, Cadda, you can heal them and explain later. Save your strength for protecting us. We have a task to do, remember?" growled her squad-mate. Ute was tall and thin, with a healthy shock of needles that stood straight up and bark darker than his armor. On his back, he carried a tank of foul-smelling liquid attached to a sprayer. Cadda straightened up, scowling. "I still don't think this is - "

The jungle rippled and hissed. Vines and undergrowth snapped at them, catching at their feet, ensnaring their arms, trying to rip their weapons from their hands. Ute yanked back, wincing at the sound of stems snapping and roots being pulled up; he was strong, but he couldn't hold off the whole forest. "Cadda! Stop them!"

"I thought you said this wasn't the time," she said dryly, as she shut her eyes. The jungle stopped being a thing of concrete shapes, and became a pulsing flow of energies - sunlight being drawn down, water being drawn up, sap being circulated - and the push, the foul corruption, from the thing in the ravine just ahead and to the right. She pushed back, soothing, calming, greenness against the red frenzy of the other. _It is all right, this is not you, this is not what you want, you are yourselves, you are free, you do not have to listen to what it tells you . . ._

For a few terrifying seconds, the vines continued to pull them apart; then, abruptly, the tall jungle trees leaned down with their branches and pushed the vines back into their places. For another few seconds, as Ute watched in amazement, the older sons and daughters of the jungle held the younger ones down; then they stopped struggling, and all went back to the strange, out-of-rhythm swaying.

Ute turned back to Cadda. "I didn't know you could do that."

"What? Awaken the rooted ones?" Ute nodded. She frowned. "Yes, that's a recent skill. We learned it by watching them do it. It seems to only work on highly lignified plants, though, while the enemy's power works better on the less-lignified ones."

"That makes enough sense," nodded Ute. "We each control the weaker plants that are most like us."

Cadda whirled on him. "It's not control! We free them from the enemy's control, and then ask them for their help. They give it freely."

"How do you know that? They've never moved before without being commanded - even if that's true, they may not know they can turn you down," retorted Ute. Cadda's face creased, the long, slender leaves on her head trembling. Ute realized, shocked, that he had struck a tracheid - that Cadda didn't know, and that it bothered her deeply. He tried to sound reassuring. "No, I didn't mean that that way. I'm sure they're glad to help, whether they realize they have a choice about it or not."

"And how would you know? You're not an empath at all," she snapped.

"No, but I have been under the enemy's direct control, when our old squad's empath was killed and we had to face it with no spiritual protection at all," replied Ute, bluntly. Cadda recoiled, curling her limbs away from him in shock. He nodded. "It's terrible. I mean, you feel some of it, I'm sure, fighting it off, protecting the rest of us. But it . . . it's like having beetles crawling under your bark, except it's not so alien as that, it's something that's fundamentally like us and yet as far from us as it can possibly get. It's like being eaten from the inside. Even if being under your con-, uh, influence feels uncomfortable, it can't be as bad as the enemy is."

Cadda straightened back up. "That's because it's a parasite. To germinate, it has to kill; worse, it has to kill an animal. It keeps some of the animal traits almost up until it blossoms. It's an abomination, an animal-corpse animated by a plant with a power-over paradigm." She wiped at her eyes. "But still, I can't - I'm not sure I approve of using that. If this doesn't work, if it kills you, I'm not attacking it with that." She pointed at the sprayer. "I'll try to put it back in stasis as long as I have shots in my weapon, and I'll rescue you if I can, but that's going too far."

Ute nodded. "I understand. You're a bender, a healer, a protector. You're not supposed to kill. Me, I come from pricklier stock. Sometimes, you have to fight weeds with fire."

Cadda flinched, but nodded again. "I'm not saying I will try to stop you, either."

"Good. Then we understand each other. Which way was it again?" She pointed, and he turned, flamethrower at the ready. "I wish I thought you were right, but I remember the tales from Earth." Cadda raised her hands to her head, shielding them again from the influence of the enemy, trying to hide their presence from it.

They crept towards the edge of the crevice, where mounds of leafy vegetation made it hard to tell where the innocent plants stopped and the Krynoid began. "I know that wherever kudzu tried to take over from the trees," whispered Ute, "the trees lost."


End file.
